DREAM PROCESS FOR THE SPIRITUAL PATH
Though not required for the spiritual path, Dream Process can be very useful. Dreams flow from the vast realms of mind, which encompass personal history, archetypal identification, patterns of intention, and higher integrative potential. Along the spiritual path, all of these levels will inevitably be activated, cleansed, restructured, transformed, and often dissolved and transcended. Attention on dreams can facilitate each stage of this necessary processing and evolution.
Dream recall is most successful when a note or recording is made as soon after waking as possible. Placing a notebook or recorder next to the bed is a strong suggestion to remember dream content. If nothing is written or recorded, at least rehearse the dream several times in the mind before rising.
The potential function of dreams is to provide self-clarity and Guidance, using the language of your own personal imagery, feelings, beliefs, intentions, and creativity.
Dream themes indicate useful intentions to be engaged and explored by the conscious self. These intentions may include:
- behavioral change
- attitude adjustment
- recognition of your actual feelings or perspectives regarding something
- a need for further communication with others
- inspiration for creative endeavors, and
- pointers for additional contemplation and enquiry in order to feel more deeply into a theme presented in the dream.
Dreams are written by the “DreamSource” with compassion and wisdom, specifically for your upliftment and help at the time they spontaneously appear.
The DreamSource is on the job constantly, expressing with skillful genius, limitless imagination, exacting focus, delightful humor, and practical inspiration. This amazing creative production continues whether the conscious awareness ever takes notice or not, and charges nothing.
Working with dreams is one method for developing the relationship with your own inner being. Referring to this as a “relationship” is literal, and not only metaphoric. It is a doorway to intimacy with your self. For those intent on the Higher Life, the range of this intimacy is not limited to deeper psychodynamic understanding.
The ultimate nature of the DreamSource is a Mystery beyond the merely personal. Its expression within individuality is as an organizing, balancing, guiding, and patient creative fount whose wisdom is unclouded by limited patterns of identification and perception.
Developing a living relationship with the DreamSource can be a powerful support for the devotional path. Spiritual devotion is ultimately directed to Consciousness beyond the merely personal, however the conscious self may imagine That. Ultimately, That is the DreamSource.
You write your dreams. You are the DreamSource. But you do not write your dreams or live as the DreamSource from the normally conscious level. When the conscious self goes temporarily unconscious in sleep, you as the DreamSource come alive. A deepening relationship between the conscious self and the DreamSource can be a deepening relationship with your own Greater Consciousness.
This relationship is of both a Higher and a highly personal nature, and continues so long as the personal is experienced as reality. This is the essence of the bhakti path: the conscious egoic self in active, loving and devoted relationship to its own Higher Nature. When the personal is finally transcended, the dream life may continue or cease. If dreaming continues, it is also completely transformed, as are all aspects of embodied mind and consciousness.
Only the highly and stably Illumined have a unified personality expression. The rest of us live constantly in a state of “multiple personality”, though this is normally not at a level that warrants the psychiatric label. Many disparate parts make up the normal human personality. These separate parts, “selves”, sub-personalities, or programs are determined by primary patterns of identification, desire, aversion, learning, and reactions to previous experience.
For human beings, all aspects of socialization are a major basis for conditioning. Social programming initiates, solidifies, and differentially empowers these sub-personalities. Human personality is a dynamic community of inner selves. The relationships between the parts of this inner community include mutual like, dislike, respect, opposition, disagreement, cooperation, and even complete unawareness of each other.
Spiritual evolution results in the gradual development of a core I-sense. This “feeling of I” is a reflection through individuality of the unitive nature of Consciousness itself, which is the Mother of all form, including individuality. The self-observation and self-acceptance that can be facilitated by Dream Process support the birth and growth of this core “I”. This potential organizing center in the personality is not itself a part of the community of inner parts. Its functions include higher will, creativity and choice; it also evolves, and in later stages is transcended.
Engaging the presence of the witness awareness while simultaneously investigating a dream is one method for directly nurturing this aspect of development. As the core I develops, the conflicted and disharmonious personality now has a greater space of awareness in which it can increasingly unify at a higher functional level. Within this greater space, more skillful and wholesome sub-personalities develop, as the energy bound in less beneficial programming is freed-up to empower these higher aspects of choice and feeling. This dynamic is clearly expressed in the dreams of someone sincerely on the spiritual path. The development of higher virtues, which are both inevitable outcomes of well-chosen sadhana, as well as essential foundations for further evolution, will often appear in dreams as individual characters and themes.
Many dream characters are personifications of these various parts of the personality. Sub-personalities, specific patterns of mind, and biographical events may appear not only as human characters in the dream, but can appear as an object or as particular locations, words, sounds, or feeling states. Any aspect of a dream may represent a part of the personality and its possible patterns of response.
Basic to ego function is the tendency for projection. During the “waking dream” we are often triggered to judge others for what we perceive as their unpleasant qualities and other failings. Often this projective tendency and its emotional drive is the result of similar patterns in ourselves which are unacknowledged or denied. Personified aspects of the personality often appear in dreams to reveal patterns of projection. This is a primary compensatory function of dreams, and can be quite creative and humorous.
A waking-state event can be described as though remembering a sleep-state dream, and the same methods of understanding, enquiry, and investigation can be used. The inner dreams of sleep, and the outer dreams of waking life are both rich and overflowing sources of meaning, significance, and helpful guidance.
Dream Process is helpful for developing various levels of intuitive awareness, since the accessibility of non-conscious levels to conscious awareness is a primary function of dreams. Attending to dreams develops this relationship between the limited and narrow-focused conscious self and its own limitless roots. Pathways of awareness are opened and strengthened with the normally unseen and unfelt realms that comprise the majority of the actual life of an individual. The further opening of these pathways is required for the continued burgeoning of lower and Higher intuition.
Dreams compensate for the narrowed awareness of the normal waking state consciousness by directing the attention during dreams to perspectives that may be denied, avoided, minimized, glossed-over, noticed only subliminally when more attention is needed, or otherwise overlooked.
After noting associations to the dream content, the first question is whether the dream may be referring to a literal situation. Next look at the dream as a story-expression of your own personality and its unfolding life-process, experiences and reactive patterns.
Look for primary themes, patterns of experience, queries for further contemplation, and symbols which are not immediately clear in their meaning, but which often unpack later as further intuitive understanding blossoms.
Dream themes often point towards a changed perspective regarding an experience, relationship, or other issue by providing a “twist” that turns-around a currently held conscious feeling or belief. Look for these “twists”, as they are quite common, and often provide a more integrative, non-judgmental reframing of an issue that is otherwise experienced as more thorny, negative, and stuck. Once this reframing function of dreams is experienced, the conscious self may look forward with alert anticipation to the next dream that will provide more of this helpful and freeing recontextualized understanding.
Dreams can be “seeded” by suggesting during the day and prior to sleep that “I will remember a dream that gives me greater insight (or help, guidance, clarity, understanding, integration, reframing, recontextualization, etc) about ____________.”
Brief recall of a dream that is limited to only a few sentences or less can be sufficient, and can often be very useful. It is not necessary to remember long epic stories, which may require more time to decipher than is practical. All of the details remembered will be specific in their meaning. Dream content is not random, nonsensical, silly, meaningless, superficial, or merely a memory dump of the mind/brain computer from the day. However, it is written in a different language than we use in the waking state. This is a language of symbol, imagery, emotion, verbal and visual puns, and personally important archetypal patterns.
It may often be enough to simply rehearse dream recall on waking, and then engage what is recalled in deeper exploration. If dreams are written down, more detail will be retained, and the relationship development with the DreamSource is stronger. The specific words and phrases used in writing down the dream or in recounting it aloud to another person are often clear, specific and direct statements that express key meanings in the dream.
Large amounts of dream recall are sometimes triggered once the conscious self begins paying attention to the communications of the DreamSource. It is not necessary to record or engage so much material. If that happens, just know that your own non-conscious being very much “wants” to talk to its conscious self, often after a lifetime of inadequate relationship.
It is sufficient to engage only those dreams that occur with stronger emotion, striking imagery, repetitive content, or are remembered more vividly on waking because of a greater power. Important themes will always be repeated with different content several times in the same night and over many days, weeks, and even years until the conscious self gets the message. Even investigating a dream only weekly or monthly can provide valuable and progressive integration and feedback.
Repetitive dreams are of singular importance as they point to issues of great significance that the DreamSource insistently wishes to make conscious. Likewise, nightmares, anxiety dreams, and dreams with powerful emotions are always valuable to explore. Finding a twist in a nightmare can often be immediately and palpably freeing, as the conscious self reframes a fearful issue, or is given direction for doing so.
For Dream Process to be valuable, it is not necessary to successfully “translate” the symbolism of the dream into waking life language. Attempting to know something of the symbolic meaning of the dream is a useful approach. This is done in various ways, including noting associations to dream content, talking to particular dream characters, enquiry questions, and the development of a language of recurrent personal symbols.
One of the most important methods of using dream associations is to define an object appearing in the dream, as if describing it for someone who does not understand the meaning of the word. Include in the description what the object does. For example, if a chair appeared in a dream, describe in detail what a chair is, and specifically what it does. For a known person, animal, object, or place appearing in the dream, mention any feelings, thoughts or memories that arise when recalling that being.
Simply using these and other methods, even without “success” in translating the dream meaning, naturally facilitates deeper processing to carry on through the day. Understanding the meaning of a dream symbol, theme, or guidance is often accompanied with a felt sense of resonance and accuracy – a feeling of “ah-ha” or “of course”. Be attentive to this felt-sense as an inner guide to recognizing when dream interpretation is moving accurately.
Sometimes a significant dream symbol may not be symbolically understood, but the urge to intuit its meaning can arise in mind intermittently through the day, so that the dream image functions like a koan or enquiry question that has an illuminating effect on self-awareness. Engaging a charged dream symbol occasionally through the day can penetrate, activate, and mine deeper areas of understanding.
As the conscious self actively contemplates dream content, it is responding to the conversational invitation that the DreamSource is always extending. Dream Process then becomes an actual conversation. Any attempt by the conscious self to feel into and understand a dream will be responded to by the DreamSource in the next dreams that are remembered. An important theme may often be inaccurately or insufficiently understood when the conscious self attempts to investigate a dream. If so, further dreams will inevitably occur that continue the conversation until the conscious self is able to understand clearly. Once a theme is understood, further dreams often arise which expand on and deepen the clarity that has already arisen.
Having investigated a dream consciously to any degree often leaves an image, statement, feeling, life-theme, question, or other triggered awareness that continues to spontaneously unpack later. For example, a character in a dream might represent a projected and denied part of the personality. Perhaps nothing more was yet understood about the meaning of the dream. When that limiting pattern is again being triggered in waking life, the spontaneous recall of the dream character can be a useful reminder with sufficient power to disrupt the otherwise unconscious process of further denial and projection.
Any conscious investigation of dream content is an invitation to further insight, recognition and integration. Using images arising from your own non-conscious life can powerfully facilitate the process of self-observation, disidentification, and clearing, as well as point beyond the field of self in which patterning arises.
The meaning of dream symbols is always individual, which is why noting associations to dream content from the previous day is often essential to understanding. Dream outflow is often commentary in response to the previous day’s events, thoughts, and reactions. Dreams often express deeply patterned life-themes, but generally do so as those patterns are showing up in the current waking life.
You can gradually write your own dream dictionary, as the on-going relationship between the conscious self and the DreamSource results in the evolving of meaningful individual symbols. These symbols may continue to express themselves throughout life. Personal dream symbols also find expression in the waking dream through synchronicity.
The meaning of dream symbols is always individual. Because of this, a felt-sense of rightness and match is essential to the accurate investigation of dream meaning. However, there are common archetypal symbols that frequently indicate particular patterns of meaning to question, though these symbols may also have meaning for an individual that is completely different than any predetermined ideas suggest.
Following are several examples of dream symbols that often (though not always!) have a common archetypal meaning. The symbols chosen frequently occur for someone on the spiritual path, and are followed by a few questions you might ask when encountering that theme in a dream. These example questions are not exhaustive for any of the symbols, and any dream explorations would need to be in the specific context of other dream details.
Death and dying
- What is/has/needs to/might be ending/passing away/changing/no longer needed/in the way?
- Is a phase of life/the path/a relationship/interest/addiction/belief manifesting in which some aspect of limitation is dying/needs to die?
Sexual or other intimate contact
- What am I strongly turned on by/aroused by?
- What do I want/fear/need to penetrate/to be penetrated by?
- What aspect of life or deeper self am I to merge with/join deeply/be in union with?
- The meaning of sexual symbolism often has nothing to do with sexuality. Individuals sometimes have sexual dreams about which they are shocked, confused, or ashamed. An understanding of the real meaning of the dream when seen clearly and symbolically often generates a sense of relief and amused surprise.
Eating, appetite and food
- What am I hungry for/desiring/wanting/needing/craving (that often has nothing to do with physical food)?
- What nourishment/support/information/clarity/experience is needed?
- Am I stuffed/overfilled/not digesting/not assimilating/deficient in some life nourishment, feeling or experience?
Dreams of Masters, Deities, and spiritual teachers - What specific aspects of my higher nature do I associate with that being?
Why is that aspect of higher life expression appearing in the context of this dream?
As the path unfolds, the functioning of the DreamSource is an increasing expression of the transformation process, as it becomes a more frequent and direct expression of the Inner Guru principle. This is the burgeoning presence of the Higher Intuition through dreams, and potentially through all other levels of experience as well. A primary function of the Higher Intuition is to provide Guidance for supporting the transformation process itself. Successful surrender to the Divine Transformative Power often requires knowledge and understanding that increases the capacity for the sadhaka’s appropriate participation and cooperation with the Higher Intelligence behind the metamorphosis. Attention to the continuous Flow of Guidance arising through both the sleep and waking dream life can provide valuable and practical aspects of this assistance.
ENGAGING THE RELATIONSHIP:
· Record or remember as much detail as possible.
· Don’t alter the remembered content in any way, particularly content which seems odd, strange, or different than you would have expected, or would occur in waking life. This is key!
· Explore the details of the dream exactly as they occurred.
· Give the dream a title.
· Communicate to another person if possible, or even out loud to yourself. Listen carefully to what is said or written. Important meaning and association will often be stated directly in simply describing the dream.
· Is the surface content of the dream its actual theme? In most dreams, the surface content is not the subject of the dream, and is symbolic. If the dream is “literally true”, does it have deeper significance as well?
· What words, phrases, and sentences are direct statements of meaning?
· What are the waking associations to any of the dream content? What is present in the dream that reminds you of any experiences, thoughts, ideas, perspectives, desires, fears, disturbances, pleasures, intentions, etc. that arose yesterday or in the past several days?
· How are any of the patterns, circumstances, people, objects, places, themes, and feelings in the dream occurring in your waking life at present?
· Which words have other possible spellings and meanings? Are there verbal or visual puns?
· What are the full names of any dream characters? Do the names have other meanings?
· What emotions occur in the dream?
· Do characters or any dream content represent two sides of a conflict you feel?
· What sub-personalities appear in the dream?
· Are there any recurrent dream symbols or themes?
· Include only minimal defining detail, and describe what is happening – what is the action – in each part of the dream.
· Are there images, actions, or themes that feel important but are mysterious or feel to have greater richness than yet understood?
· Is there an image or symbol to engage occasionally through the day?
· What lessons, guidance and directions are present?
· What questions arise for further contemplation and enquiry?
· Are there patterns for disidentification and clearing to watch for with vigilance through the day?
· What would you ask a dream part? How would you describe yourself if you were that dream part?
· If this situation arose in waking life, how would you respond?
· How would you finish the dream beyond what you recalled?
It is not necessary to use all of these methods to investigate a dream. Sometimes only one is enough, depending on your time, intentions, and depth of the dream theme. With practice, and the deepening of the relationship, many dreams will easily and immediately reveal their richness. The DreamSource writes dreams to be useful to the conscious self. They are simply written in a different language. Fortunately, it is your own other language.
Though not required for the spiritual path, Dream Process can be very useful. Dreams flow from the vast realms of mind, which encompass personal history, archetypal identification, patterns of intention, and higher integrative potential. Along the spiritual path, all of these levels will inevitably be activated, cleansed, restructured, transformed, and often dissolved and transcended. Attention on dreams can facilitate each stage of this necessary processing and evolution.
Dream recall is most successful when a note or recording is made as soon after waking as possible. Placing a notebook or recorder next to the bed is a strong suggestion to remember dream content. If nothing is written or recorded, at least rehearse the dream several times in the mind before rising.
The potential function of dreams is to provide self-clarity and Guidance, using the language of your own personal imagery, feelings, beliefs, intentions, and creativity.
Dream themes indicate useful intentions to be engaged and explored by the conscious self. These intentions may include:
- behavioral change
- attitude adjustment
- recognition of your actual feelings or perspectives regarding something
- a need for further communication with others
- inspiration for creative endeavors, and
- pointers for additional contemplation and enquiry in order to feel more deeply into a theme presented in the dream.
Dreams are written by the “DreamSource” with compassion and wisdom, specifically for your upliftment and help at the time they spontaneously appear.
The DreamSource is on the job constantly, expressing with skillful genius, limitless imagination, exacting focus, delightful humor, and practical inspiration. This amazing creative production continues whether the conscious awareness ever takes notice or not, and charges nothing.
Working with dreams is one method for developing the relationship with your own inner being. Referring to this as a “relationship” is literal, and not only metaphoric. It is a doorway to intimacy with your self. For those intent on the Higher Life, the range of this intimacy is not limited to deeper psychodynamic understanding.
The ultimate nature of the DreamSource is a Mystery beyond the merely personal. Its expression within individuality is as an organizing, balancing, guiding, and patient creative fount whose wisdom is unclouded by limited patterns of identification and perception.
Developing a living relationship with the DreamSource can be a powerful support for the devotional path. Spiritual devotion is ultimately directed to Consciousness beyond the merely personal, however the conscious self may imagine That. Ultimately, That is the DreamSource.
You write your dreams. You are the DreamSource. But you do not write your dreams or live as the DreamSource from the normally conscious level. When the conscious self goes temporarily unconscious in sleep, you as the DreamSource come alive. A deepening relationship between the conscious self and the DreamSource can be a deepening relationship with your own Greater Consciousness.
This relationship is of both a Higher and a highly personal nature, and continues so long as the personal is experienced as reality. This is the essence of the bhakti path: the conscious egoic self in active, loving and devoted relationship to its own Higher Nature. When the personal is finally transcended, the dream life may continue or cease. If dreaming continues, it is also completely transformed, as are all aspects of embodied mind and consciousness.
Only the highly and stably Illumined have a unified personality expression. The rest of us live constantly in a state of “multiple personality”, though this is normally not at a level that warrants the psychiatric label. Many disparate parts make up the normal human personality. These separate parts, “selves”, sub-personalities, or programs are determined by primary patterns of identification, desire, aversion, learning, and reactions to previous experience.
For human beings, all aspects of socialization are a major basis for conditioning. Social programming initiates, solidifies, and differentially empowers these sub-personalities. Human personality is a dynamic community of inner selves. The relationships between the parts of this inner community include mutual like, dislike, respect, opposition, disagreement, cooperation, and even complete unawareness of each other.
Spiritual evolution results in the gradual development of a core I-sense. This “feeling of I” is a reflection through individuality of the unitive nature of Consciousness itself, which is the Mother of all form, including individuality. The self-observation and self-acceptance that can be facilitated by Dream Process support the birth and growth of this core “I”. This potential organizing center in the personality is not itself a part of the community of inner parts. Its functions include higher will, creativity and choice; it also evolves, and in later stages is transcended.
Engaging the presence of the witness awareness while simultaneously investigating a dream is one method for directly nurturing this aspect of development. As the core I develops, the conflicted and disharmonious personality now has a greater space of awareness in which it can increasingly unify at a higher functional level. Within this greater space, more skillful and wholesome sub-personalities develop, as the energy bound in less beneficial programming is freed-up to empower these higher aspects of choice and feeling. This dynamic is clearly expressed in the dreams of someone sincerely on the spiritual path. The development of higher virtues, which are both inevitable outcomes of well-chosen sadhana, as well as essential foundations for further evolution, will often appear in dreams as individual characters and themes.
Many dream characters are personifications of these various parts of the personality. Sub-personalities, specific patterns of mind, and biographical events may appear not only as human characters in the dream, but can appear as an object or as particular locations, words, sounds, or feeling states. Any aspect of a dream may represent a part of the personality and its possible patterns of response.
Basic to ego function is the tendency for projection. During the “waking dream” we are often triggered to judge others for what we perceive as their unpleasant qualities and other failings. Often this projective tendency and its emotional drive is the result of similar patterns in ourselves which are unacknowledged or denied. Personified aspects of the personality often appear in dreams to reveal patterns of projection. This is a primary compensatory function of dreams, and can be quite creative and humorous.
A waking-state event can be described as though remembering a sleep-state dream, and the same methods of understanding, enquiry, and investigation can be used. The inner dreams of sleep, and the outer dreams of waking life are both rich and overflowing sources of meaning, significance, and helpful guidance.
Dream Process is helpful for developing various levels of intuitive awareness, since the accessibility of non-conscious levels to conscious awareness is a primary function of dreams. Attending to dreams develops this relationship between the limited and narrow-focused conscious self and its own limitless roots. Pathways of awareness are opened and strengthened with the normally unseen and unfelt realms that comprise the majority of the actual life of an individual. The further opening of these pathways is required for the continued burgeoning of lower and Higher intuition.
Dreams compensate for the narrowed awareness of the normal waking state consciousness by directing the attention during dreams to perspectives that may be denied, avoided, minimized, glossed-over, noticed only subliminally when more attention is needed, or otherwise overlooked.
After noting associations to the dream content, the first question is whether the dream may be referring to a literal situation. Next look at the dream as a story-expression of your own personality and its unfolding life-process, experiences and reactive patterns.
Look for primary themes, patterns of experience, queries for further contemplation, and symbols which are not immediately clear in their meaning, but which often unpack later as further intuitive understanding blossoms.
Dream themes often point towards a changed perspective regarding an experience, relationship, or other issue by providing a “twist” that turns-around a currently held conscious feeling or belief. Look for these “twists”, as they are quite common, and often provide a more integrative, non-judgmental reframing of an issue that is otherwise experienced as more thorny, negative, and stuck. Once this reframing function of dreams is experienced, the conscious self may look forward with alert anticipation to the next dream that will provide more of this helpful and freeing recontextualized understanding.
Dreams can be “seeded” by suggesting during the day and prior to sleep that “I will remember a dream that gives me greater insight (or help, guidance, clarity, understanding, integration, reframing, recontextualization, etc) about ____________.”
Brief recall of a dream that is limited to only a few sentences or less can be sufficient, and can often be very useful. It is not necessary to remember long epic stories, which may require more time to decipher than is practical. All of the details remembered will be specific in their meaning. Dream content is not random, nonsensical, silly, meaningless, superficial, or merely a memory dump of the mind/brain computer from the day. However, it is written in a different language than we use in the waking state. This is a language of symbol, imagery, emotion, verbal and visual puns, and personally important archetypal patterns.
It may often be enough to simply rehearse dream recall on waking, and then engage what is recalled in deeper exploration. If dreams are written down, more detail will be retained, and the relationship development with the DreamSource is stronger. The specific words and phrases used in writing down the dream or in recounting it aloud to another person are often clear, specific and direct statements that express key meanings in the dream.
Large amounts of dream recall are sometimes triggered once the conscious self begins paying attention to the communications of the DreamSource. It is not necessary to record or engage so much material. If that happens, just know that your own non-conscious being very much “wants” to talk to its conscious self, often after a lifetime of inadequate relationship.
It is sufficient to engage only those dreams that occur with stronger emotion, striking imagery, repetitive content, or are remembered more vividly on waking because of a greater power. Important themes will always be repeated with different content several times in the same night and over many days, weeks, and even years until the conscious self gets the message. Even investigating a dream only weekly or monthly can provide valuable and progressive integration and feedback.
Repetitive dreams are of singular importance as they point to issues of great significance that the DreamSource insistently wishes to make conscious. Likewise, nightmares, anxiety dreams, and dreams with powerful emotions are always valuable to explore. Finding a twist in a nightmare can often be immediately and palpably freeing, as the conscious self reframes a fearful issue, or is given direction for doing so.
For Dream Process to be valuable, it is not necessary to successfully “translate” the symbolism of the dream into waking life language. Attempting to know something of the symbolic meaning of the dream is a useful approach. This is done in various ways, including noting associations to dream content, talking to particular dream characters, enquiry questions, and the development of a language of recurrent personal symbols.
One of the most important methods of using dream associations is to define an object appearing in the dream, as if describing it for someone who does not understand the meaning of the word. Include in the description what the object does. For example, if a chair appeared in a dream, describe in detail what a chair is, and specifically what it does. For a known person, animal, object, or place appearing in the dream, mention any feelings, thoughts or memories that arise when recalling that being.
Simply using these and other methods, even without “success” in translating the dream meaning, naturally facilitates deeper processing to carry on through the day. Understanding the meaning of a dream symbol, theme, or guidance is often accompanied with a felt sense of resonance and accuracy – a feeling of “ah-ha” or “of course”. Be attentive to this felt-sense as an inner guide to recognizing when dream interpretation is moving accurately.
Sometimes a significant dream symbol may not be symbolically understood, but the urge to intuit its meaning can arise in mind intermittently through the day, so that the dream image functions like a koan or enquiry question that has an illuminating effect on self-awareness. Engaging a charged dream symbol occasionally through the day can penetrate, activate, and mine deeper areas of understanding.
As the conscious self actively contemplates dream content, it is responding to the conversational invitation that the DreamSource is always extending. Dream Process then becomes an actual conversation. Any attempt by the conscious self to feel into and understand a dream will be responded to by the DreamSource in the next dreams that are remembered. An important theme may often be inaccurately or insufficiently understood when the conscious self attempts to investigate a dream. If so, further dreams will inevitably occur that continue the conversation until the conscious self is able to understand clearly. Once a theme is understood, further dreams often arise which expand on and deepen the clarity that has already arisen.
Having investigated a dream consciously to any degree often leaves an image, statement, feeling, life-theme, question, or other triggered awareness that continues to spontaneously unpack later. For example, a character in a dream might represent a projected and denied part of the personality. Perhaps nothing more was yet understood about the meaning of the dream. When that limiting pattern is again being triggered in waking life, the spontaneous recall of the dream character can be a useful reminder with sufficient power to disrupt the otherwise unconscious process of further denial and projection.
Any conscious investigation of dream content is an invitation to further insight, recognition and integration. Using images arising from your own non-conscious life can powerfully facilitate the process of self-observation, disidentification, and clearing, as well as point beyond the field of self in which patterning arises.
The meaning of dream symbols is always individual, which is why noting associations to dream content from the previous day is often essential to understanding. Dream outflow is often commentary in response to the previous day’s events, thoughts, and reactions. Dreams often express deeply patterned life-themes, but generally do so as those patterns are showing up in the current waking life.
You can gradually write your own dream dictionary, as the on-going relationship between the conscious self and the DreamSource results in the evolving of meaningful individual symbols. These symbols may continue to express themselves throughout life. Personal dream symbols also find expression in the waking dream through synchronicity.
The meaning of dream symbols is always individual. Because of this, a felt-sense of rightness and match is essential to the accurate investigation of dream meaning. However, there are common archetypal symbols that frequently indicate particular patterns of meaning to question, though these symbols may also have meaning for an individual that is completely different than any predetermined ideas suggest.
Following are several examples of dream symbols that often (though not always!) have a common archetypal meaning. The symbols chosen frequently occur for someone on the spiritual path, and are followed by a few questions you might ask when encountering that theme in a dream. These example questions are not exhaustive for any of the symbols, and any dream explorations would need to be in the specific context of other dream details.
Death and dying
- What is/has/needs to/might be ending/passing away/changing/no longer needed/in the way?
- Is a phase of life/the path/a relationship/interest/addiction/belief manifesting in which some aspect of limitation is dying/needs to die?
Sexual or other intimate contact
- What am I strongly turned on by/aroused by?
- What do I want/fear/need to penetrate/to be penetrated by?
- What aspect of life or deeper self am I to merge with/join deeply/be in union with?
- The meaning of sexual symbolism often has nothing to do with sexuality. Individuals sometimes have sexual dreams about which they are shocked, confused, or ashamed. An understanding of the real meaning of the dream when seen clearly and symbolically often generates a sense of relief and amused surprise.
Eating, appetite and food
- What am I hungry for/desiring/wanting/needing/craving (that often has nothing to do with physical food)?
- What nourishment/support/information/clarity/experience is needed?
- Am I stuffed/overfilled/not digesting/not assimilating/deficient in some life nourishment, feeling or experience?
Dreams of Masters, Deities, and spiritual teachers - What specific aspects of my higher nature do I associate with that being?
Why is that aspect of higher life expression appearing in the context of this dream?
As the path unfolds, the functioning of the DreamSource is an increasing expression of the transformation process, as it becomes a more frequent and direct expression of the Inner Guru principle. This is the burgeoning presence of the Higher Intuition through dreams, and potentially through all other levels of experience as well. A primary function of the Higher Intuition is to provide Guidance for supporting the transformation process itself. Successful surrender to the Divine Transformative Power often requires knowledge and understanding that increases the capacity for the sadhaka’s appropriate participation and cooperation with the Higher Intelligence behind the metamorphosis. Attention to the continuous Flow of Guidance arising through both the sleep and waking dream life can provide valuable and practical aspects of this assistance.
ENGAGING THE RELATIONSHIP:
· Record or remember as much detail as possible.
· Don’t alter the remembered content in any way, particularly content which seems odd, strange, or different than you would have expected, or would occur in waking life. This is key!
· Explore the details of the dream exactly as they occurred.
· Give the dream a title.
· Communicate to another person if possible, or even out loud to yourself. Listen carefully to what is said or written. Important meaning and association will often be stated directly in simply describing the dream.
· Is the surface content of the dream its actual theme? In most dreams, the surface content is not the subject of the dream, and is symbolic. If the dream is “literally true”, does it have deeper significance as well?
· What words, phrases, and sentences are direct statements of meaning?
· What are the waking associations to any of the dream content? What is present in the dream that reminds you of any experiences, thoughts, ideas, perspectives, desires, fears, disturbances, pleasures, intentions, etc. that arose yesterday or in the past several days?
· How are any of the patterns, circumstances, people, objects, places, themes, and feelings in the dream occurring in your waking life at present?
· Which words have other possible spellings and meanings? Are there verbal or visual puns?
· What are the full names of any dream characters? Do the names have other meanings?
· What emotions occur in the dream?
· Do characters or any dream content represent two sides of a conflict you feel?
· What sub-personalities appear in the dream?
· Are there any recurrent dream symbols or themes?
· Include only minimal defining detail, and describe what is happening – what is the action – in each part of the dream.
· Are there images, actions, or themes that feel important but are mysterious or feel to have greater richness than yet understood?
· Is there an image or symbol to engage occasionally through the day?
· What lessons, guidance and directions are present?
· What questions arise for further contemplation and enquiry?
· Are there patterns for disidentification and clearing to watch for with vigilance through the day?
· What would you ask a dream part? How would you describe yourself if you were that dream part?
· If this situation arose in waking life, how would you respond?
· How would you finish the dream beyond what you recalled?
It is not necessary to use all of these methods to investigate a dream. Sometimes only one is enough, depending on your time, intentions, and depth of the dream theme. With practice, and the deepening of the relationship, many dreams will easily and immediately reveal their richness. The DreamSource writes dreams to be useful to the conscious self. They are simply written in a different language. Fortunately, it is your own other language.
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